Pinterest Ads for Your Online Store: A Step-by-Step Launch Guide

People come to Pinterest looking for ideas for what to buy, which makes it one of the most natural channels for clothing, home decor and accessories stores selling in the US and Europe. Below is the launch sequence for a Shopify store: from the business account and catalog to your first campaigns, budget and payments. At the end you'll find a checklist to run through before you go live.

Step 01A business account and a store that will pass review

Pinterest ads can only be run from a business account. You can create one from scratch or convert a regular profile to business mode. Set your country and billing currency right away: according to Pinterest's help center, you can't change the account currency later - you'd have to open a new ad account.

If you have a US LLC, it makes sense to register the account under the company and choose USD. That keeps both payments and tax paperwork simpler.

Before connecting your catalog, take a hard look at the store itself. Pinterest's merchant guidelines explicitly require:

• a clear, easy-to-find return policy - whether you accept returns, how they work, the timeframes and how to contact you;
• a high-quality website and product pages, with no broken links or unfinished sections;
• open access to products without mandatory sign-up;
• honest expectations on price, quality and delivery times.

Affiliate sites and wholesale stores aren't allowed under these rules. If your product pages are still rough around the edges, polish them first - our guide to Shopify product page optimization will help.

Step 02The Pinterest app for Shopify and catalog sync

Next, install the official Pinterest app for Shopify. It's free - you only pay for the ads themselves, and all charges are in US dollars. At the time of writing, the app has a 4.1 rating from 1,708 reviews.

The process is simple:

1. Install the app from the Shopify App Store and log in to your Pinterest business account.
2. Verify your store's domain - the app will prompt you to do this.
3. Allow the catalog upload. Your products become product Pins, which are later used to build shopping ads.
4. Wait for the catalog review. You can check the status and product-level errors in Ads Manager under Catalogs.

Pinterest is inconsistent about how often the feed updates: the app page mentions both daily updates and "near real-time" uploads. Merchants say in reviews that changes can take up to 24 hours to show up. Keep that in mind if you're changing prices ahead of a sale.

Pinterest itself requires catalog prices and availability to be no more than seven days old. Out-of-stock products are better hidden in Shopify than left in the feed.

Step 03Pinterest Tag and the Conversions API

Without conversion tracking, sales campaigns simply won't work: the algorithm has nothing to learn from. The Shopify app installs the Pinterest Tag and connects the Conversions API - a second channel that sends events straight from the server and is less affected by browser ad blockers.

After installing, make sure events are actually coming through: page views, add to cart and checkout. The most reliable way is to place a test order and see whether a purchase event shows up in Ads Manager.

The tag also powers retargeting. It's used to build audiences of people who viewed products, added items to their cart or have already bought from you. The sooner you install it, the bigger those lists will be by the time you launch.

Step 04Which campaigns to run: shopping, Performance+ and retargeting

A store has three solid options, and they work well together.

Shopping ads from your catalog

Ads are built automatically from the products in your feed. You choose the Sales objective and a product group: the whole catalog or, say, just your bestsellers. To start, pick your 10-30 top-selling items rather than your entire range.

Performance+

This is an automated mode where Pinterest picks audiences, bids and creatives for you. According to Pinterest's help center, it's available for the Consideration, Leads and Sales objectives. In sales campaigns, Performance+ uses your whole catalog - you can't select a specific product group. It can also swap photo backgrounds and resize images to fit different formats.

There's a catch: Pinterest says Performance+ for sales works best with 50 or more conversions per week. A new store usually doesn't have that many, so Pinterest itself recommends starting with a consideration (traffic) campaign and moving to Performance+ once you've built up some data.

Retargeting

Ads shown to people who have already visited your site. It helps to split audiences: abandoned carts in one, general visitors in another. Cart abandoners are your "hottest" audience, so you can afford to spend more on them.

Step 05Starting budget and how to tell your ads are working

Pinterest doesn't set an official minimum for Performance+, so you can use any budget you like. But the algorithm won't learn on pocket change. Here are benchmarks from the EasyApps guide for Shopify:

• start - $20-50 per day across 2-3 campaigns;
• split - roughly 60% on reaching new people and 40% on retargeting;
• learning phase - 2-4 weeks, during which it's best to leave campaigns alone;
• scaling - no more than a 20-30% budget increase per week, or the learning phase will reset.

Keep bids on automatic at first. A manual bid makes sense once you know your acceptable cost per purchase.

What to watch in your reports: cost per purchase (CPA), ROAS (revenue per ad dollar) and add-to-cart rate. The same guide puts a normal ROAS at 2-3 at launch and 4-5 after optimization, but that's an industry estimate, not a promise. Work out your own break-even point based on your margin - it matters more than any average.

And don't look at clicks alone. On Pinterest, people often save a Pin and buy a few days later, so compare 7-day and 30-day attribution windows, including view-through conversions.

Step 06Paying for ads with a card from the CIS

This is where most people get stuck. Pinterest doesn't accept cards from just any country - only those issued in countries listed on the Accepted payments page. At the time of writing, among the CIS countries and their neighbors, Georgia is on the list, while Russia, Belarus, Kazakhstan, Uzbekistan, Armenia, Azerbaijan, Kyrgyzstan, Moldova and Ukraine are not. The list changes, so check it before adding a card.

What you need to know about payments:

• Visa and Mastercard credit and debit cards are accepted, as well as Wise and Revolut cards;
• prepaid cards and PayPal are not accepted;
• the first charge happens once you've spent $50 or on the 1st of the following month, and after that the threshold grows as payments go through successfully (billing help article).

The practical route for an entrepreneur from the CIS is to pay with a card issued in a listed country in your own name or your company's name. For example, a corporate card from a US bank if you have an LLC, or a card from a Georgian bank. We covered card options in our article on how to get an online card from Russia and Belarus.

Step 07Why catalogs and ads get rejected

You can see the reasons for specific products in Ads Manager, in the issues list of the Catalogs section. Based on Pinterest's rules and discussions in the merchant community, these are the most common ones:

• No clear return policy. Even if you have one, the review may miss it if it's buried. Put a link in your footer and on product pages.
• The site falls short on quality. Typos, empty pages, broken links, blurry photos.
• A never-ending sale. Merchants get rejected on the grounds that their products are always on sale. A strikethrough price across the entire catalog all year round looks suspicious.
• Price or availability doesn't match. If the feed says one thing and the site says another, the product gets rejected.
• User complaints and prohibited product categories.

Dropshipping is a separate story: it isn't explicitly banned in the rules, but these stores are more often flagged for shipping and return issues. Be honest about real delivery times. If you ship to the US, also factor in the new duty rules - more on that in our article on US duties for parcels.

Fix everything before you file an appeal. According to merchants, the number of attempts is limited, and after a few rejections you can no longer resubmit.

Wrap-upPre-launch checklist

1. Your Pinterest business account is set up with the right country and currency.
2. Your site has a clear return and shipping policy and contact details, with no broken links or empty pages.
3. The Pinterest app for Shopify is installed, the domain is verified, and the catalog is uploaded and approved.
4. The Pinterest Tag and Conversions API are sending events, and a test purchase shows up in Ads Manager.
5. You've added a card issued in a country on Pinterest's list, and it isn't prepaid.
6. You're running 2-3 campaigns: shopping for bestsellers, traffic or Performance+, and retargeting.
7. Your budget covers a 2-4 week learning phase, and you've calculated your break-even ROAS.

Work through the list in order, and in a couple of weeks you'll have your first data to base decisions on. If you get stuck on any step, especially payments or store review, drop us a message.